


One Step

by Fanofthearts



Series: Healing [2]
Category: Holby City
Genre: Don’t ever let me write canon, F/F, Fix It Fic, Oh My God, Therapy, its a start, taking a step back together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 00:06:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17991104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fanofthearts/pseuds/Fanofthearts
Summary: A continuation of Between Will and Sacrifice, Serena starts therapy.





	One Step

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Iordio for betaing thing as always. Please, please I beg of you don't let me ever write canon crap again. This was a hard one, lots of rewrites and tweaking. I hope ya'll like it.
> 
> Come follow me on tumblr to gush about our ladies! Lesbianishstuff

The pendant slid back and forth on the chain, worried by a sweaty palm. Back, forth, back, forth. In the quiet of the waiting room it made a slight zipping noise as it ran against the white gold of the chain. Serena sighed and resisted the urge to get up and pace. The room was everything she expected: planters with money trees and other waxy leafed variatels strategically placed to create calm, calm gold colours, and comfy chairs and a strategically placed box of kleenex. 

She resisted rolling her eyes. She went to therapy after Ellie, she felt she had no choice, she was drowning in grief, without therapy she wasn’t sure she would have survived. It had helped settle her, as did group led meditation. That was in France, in another country where she was an anonymous face. Here in Holby she was a face, was a known person. No matter how much she advocated for mental health, brain health, she mentally corrected she still felt the stigma of actually putting herself out there, of doing the work. 

It was three days after Bernie had decided to stay, three days of talks, of tears, of laughter. Serena had forgotten how much Bernie could make her laugh. When they were giggling, she could forget what she had done, just barely. They had curled on the couch Serena’s laptop balanced on Bernie’s knees, Serena’s head on her shoulder looking down at the screen. Serena felt the guilt crawl up her neck as they talked about different therapy options. Bernie was still in contact with her therapist in Nairobi, she had skype sessions once a week and felt that it was still working. 

Bernie was scrolling through the BACP website looking for reasonably local counsellors. Serena had narrowed it down to two. After calling their first choice and being politely informed they are not able to take new clients for a couple of months; she contacted her second choice. The woman’s profile was proficient yet somehow welcoming. It was the picture that drew Serena to her. Kind eyes stared back at her from pair of dark rimmed glasses, she simply looked kind. 

“Would you like me to take you and pick you up? See what you think of her?” Bernie asked in a low voice, she knew Serena was wary about starting this. 

The thought of having Bernie’s comforting presence with her did little to reassure her. She knew how hard therapy was, she didn’t want to come out having her emotions  
stirred, feeling bereft and just wanting to be alone. “Thank you, but I think I want to go alone.”

“Okay.” Bernie gave her a slight smile. 

“It-it's not that I don’t want you with me…it's just. I sometimes need to be alone after a session.”

Long fingers squeezed hers, “I know, its okay.”

Serena had taken annual leave for the remainder of the month, Bernie would start her new position after the 2nd January; she was exhausted from the wedding preparations, from the emotional shock of Bernie being home, from the despair of cheating, the stress of Christmas, and of the impending anniversary. Henrik had reminded her that she was needed on AAU but for once she didn’t feel the need to put her life on hold for the hospital. She and Bernie were going to try to make this work, Bernie was home, Jason was happy, Guinevere was healthy, and the world could go round.

She checked her watch again, three minutes until her appointment. She sighed, how she hated tardiness. Just then the door to an office down the hall opened. A young boy bounded out running towards the waiting room and the only other occupant, a young woman reading a book. “Mum! Mum! Maggie and me made dinosaurs!”

The woman smiled, accepting the oddly shaped lump of play-doh he handed her. “Oh, Josh, it’s lovely. Shall we put it on your special shelf with clothy?”

“Josh, what did we say about inside voices?” The woman gently reprimanded him. 

“Sorry Maggie.” He repeated is joy in a quieter voice, grabbing his mother’s hand and pulling her towards the door waving over his shoulder. 

Serena watched them leave before turning her eyes towards the woman standing in front of her. She had on a light blue jumper that was a tad big for her frame, thick brown cords and pale blue suede loafers, and Serena noted her mismatched socks. “Maggie Morrison.” She held out her hand smiling. Serena stood and returned her hand shake, immediately put at ease. “Serena Campbell, nice to meet you.”

She showed her into her therapy room, it had a lived in feel. For a brief second Serena felt transported back to her Dad’s Mother’s flat. Her own Mum would tut at the laid back atmosphere, the mismatched furniture, the slightly crooked photos hung haphazardly on the walls. She smiled, it felt homely and safe. 

A large bookcase full psychotherapy journals and textbooks, colouring books, stress balls, tchotkes that Serena could only describe as tourist tat, several cushions, and stereo to record therapy sessions occupied one wall. A few boxes full of toys that were obviously used for family and children sessions adorned another. “Six year olds.” She shrugged gesturing to the sofa across from a well-worn brown leather chair. 

Serena put a cushion behind her back and sat down on the edge of the sofa, her gaze fluttering around the room. “Oh, tell me about it. My dear friend has four children, three are in the nine to two range.” And like that the tension in the air released. It didn’t feel like therapy, not like the last time, perhaps because she wasn’t actively mourning. They talked about their families, their shared child rearing, and Serena discovered Maggie’s past of working in the ED as a social worker. After a bit the conversation dwindled, “So tell me, how did an American end up in Holby?”

The smile on the therapists face faltered a little, “I was thirty five and had just lost my only daughter, I thought I needed a fresh start. I came here met a man and the rest they say is history.”

Serena felt her heart lurch, “My Elinor will be gone two years in three weeks time.” She whispered. The room fell silent, she risked a glance up at her therapist expecting the see pity on her face. Instead all she was shining eyes and a look of understanding. She didn’t want to talk, this was the part that was hard, it would be so easy to not open herself up. She swallowed hard, this was what she was here for. She needed to talk to get past this.

“Tell me Serena, what brought you to me today?”

Her hand went to her pendant again, sliding it back and forth along its chain. “My partner, me, us. Bernie, my partner, was working at a hospital in Kenya, we were trying the long distance thing.” She is sighed dropping her hand, “That is all it feels like we have been doing since we’ve been together. Stolen moments here and there. Suddenly she handed in her notice, left her dream job, and came home.”

Maggie looked at her, waiting. 

“She... she surprised me.”

Silence hung, the clock on the wall near the door clicked quietly. 

“I wasn’t expecting her home. I’d been on the end of radio silence from her for nearly a month. I was cross. I was upset.” She paused, feeling the need to justify herself to the silence, “It would make anyone upset, having text, emails, phone calls, facetime calls all be ignored.”

“You were angry and upset.” She stated simply.

Serena paused, the knot of emotion roiled in her stomach, “Of course I was angry! Wouldn’t you be?”

Maggie remained motionless. 

Rubbing her face Serena sighed, “After two and a half years of being together; living on different continents; after everything we shared I… I… I just expected more. I expected her to tell me things, talk things over with me. Instead she surprises me, coming home unannounced without even speaking to me about this.” She dropped her necklace. “How dare she?! She gives up her dream job to be with me, walks away from everything she worked so hard for to come back to dull Holby for me! Not even a text. Oh, I know she will say that it’s because I would have tried to talk her out of it. But who does that? I’ll tell you who, Berenice bloody Wolfe, that’s who, always going by the seat of her pants.” Serena  
finished, her hands balled tight in her lap. 

“Would you have?”

Serena looks up almost forgetting she wasn’t alone. “Would I have what?”

“Talked her into staying in Kenya.”

“Of course! How could she walk away from that job for me? I could have never asked her to sacrifice that for me. We had talked that once things had settled down here I would join her. That was the original plan.”

“But you didn’t ask her. She did it of her own volition.”

“Yes! Without consulting me.”

Maggie nodded, “Maybe that is why she did it, because she didn’t want you to have to make that choice, to ask something of her.”

A dam broke inside of Serena and words flowed from her mouth, “But had she asked me, had she communicated with me I would have… Oh god!” Serena felt the tears come. “Our friendship was so wonderful at the beginning. We kissed a couple of times and I implied that I was falling for her, which I was. And before it could begin she buggered off to Kiev on secondment for three months. Radio silence. She ran away and left me. But she came back, gave this speech about changing for me. Bernie came back and we made it work.” Serena smiled, “Things were good, so good I should have known that it wouldn’t last… then Ellie, Ellie died.” Her voice broke. “I treated her so horribly. I pushed her away with everything I had. I was so cruel to her but she stood right by me and took everything I threw at her. She loved me through it all.”

Serena paused to collect her thoughts. “I took a sabbatical for nine months. I was on my own for the first four, and things weren’t working out for her at the hospital so she handed her notice in. She took all her annual leave, and headed to the south of France. We had a blissful three months together, we were in our own bubble. Responsible to no-one. No ties. We weren’t naive enough to know we could live in this cocoon that we’d created and that a return to work for both of us was on the horizon. Bernie has this sense of adventure. I call her a fearless and fantastic surgeon; and she is. That’s why, when the Nairobi opportunity came up, I urged her to take it, for us to take it. It was a perfect fit for her and me. We were going to be there together, working and living together in a new trauma facility.”

Serena reached for her pendant and smiled at the memory of Bernie’s voice when she read the email aloud. “I was contacted by the CEO at Holby City asking if I would come back to Holby as interim CEO as he needed to take a leave of absence, just as we were getting set up in Nairobi. Then work and life intervened and I stayed here longer. Things were, okay, I missed her but I was so busy. Suddenly Bernie had defaulted to radio silence, until she rocked up in my office one June morning as a surprise. I went out to Nairobi for a week in July. Then things just kept coming one after another, no break. Then…she was silent again and…I…I cheated. I cheated with a subordinate… another woman.”

“You had an affair.”

“Of sorts, the same day Bernie surprised me. Two weeks ago… my nephew’s wedding. I tried to hide the shame, but she knew something was wrong and guessed. I am perimenopausal, tired, stressed, lonely, and I know that is no excuse. She said we can get through it, that it’s not insurmountable. Later we agreed to end it, for her to go back to Nairobi, to her dream job. She needs more than Holby can offer, but after the reception I came home to find her at my kitchen table telling me that we can work this out.”

“Do you want to?”

Serena’s hand stilled on her pendant the silence was deafening. Serena felt a panic squeeze in her heart at the thought of losing Bernie but at the same time felt nauseous about making her stay. “Yes. No. I don’t want to lose her. I love her. She… us, she is the great love affair of my life.” She smiled, “I know what it feels like to lose her and I don’t know if I can go through that again. I love her more than I have anyone in my life. I’m… I’m terrified.”

“But…”

“But if I ask her stay, I feel like I am taking her freedom and that she’ll feel trapped, miserable and she deserves better. How can she forgive me for what I have done? After all I put her through when I lost Elinor, after what I put her through with my infidelity. Why would she want to stay? How can she forgive me?” Serena felt the tears pour hot down her face. “I feel so guilty! I can’t get rid of this horrible feeling in my chest.” Her hand rested on her shirt between her breasts.

“From what you have said Serena, it appears that she came back on her own accord with no prompting from you, and that you are not making her stay.” Maggie regarded the crying woman in front of her, “Although I feel she could have perhaps handled the situation better. I think that bit lies in the lack of communication in general. You told her to stay in Kenya, then to go back and yet she showed up at your house. It sounds to me that she is committed to you and is willing to work for you have

“Long distance relationships are hard, but now you are both back here maybe it’s time for you to start anew. I won’t lie I see a lot couples trying to get past an infidelity and it is very hard. It is a lot of work and communication is needed by both parties, and not just pointing fingers and throwing blame. I feel she is right, this isn’t insurmountable. My question to you is can you forgive yourself?”

“What?” Her head snapped up. 

“You feel guilty, it’s understandable, but it seems like your guilt is holding you in place.”

“Of course I feel guilty! I snogged another woman, my subordinate. On my ward of all things. I cheated on the love of my life, for what? Because I couldn’t control myself?!”

“Did you have sex with her?”

“What?”

“Did you have sex with her?”

“No, I couldn’t I just… it was wrong, so, so wrong.”

“You were able to control yourself.”

Serena let out a defeated sigh, “I’m no longer her equal.”

“I’m sorry?”

Serena’s head felt like it was spinning, she felt like she was being pulled in ten directions at once, so many probes into so many sore spots all at once was making her feel ill. “Along time ago I told her we were equals. It was something I firmly believed. It was a feeling I had never felt before, neither personally or professionally.” Serena looked at Maggie, “We are both very good at our jobs, and to find another confident female surgeon is so rare. When I operate with her it feels like… like the easiest thing in the world. Our relationship out of theatre, before Ellie died, it felt like that too.

“I felt like we got that back for a while, it was seamless, an equal give and take. I feel now like I’m less, less because of… because of what I’ve done. I feel like I’ve lost what little ground I had to stand on because… because if I commit to her, give all of myself to her and she leaves me….Oh god.” She pulled a tissue from the box to her left. “I fear I’ll lose myself, I’m not sure I can come back from that, from losing another person.” She wiped her eyes, “Not if she walks away from me.” Even though Serena felt like her chest was splitting in two she suddenly had clarity at the root of her guilt. 

A small smile played on the woman’s lips, “That’s why I’m here. If you’re willing, I can help. But also if you decide this isn’t something you want, something isn’t working, whether it is the therapy, or you and Bernie it is okay to walk away. Give yourself that option, even if it scares you. I think sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves saying that something must happen in order for it to work. Give yourself that freedom,” Maggie clenches her fist to emphasise her point. “When love becomes a chore, we retreat to into ourselves for protection. I feel Serena, that if we work on verbalising your fears, and if Bernie will do the same, you have a wonderful opportunity to come out the other side as stronger people and a much stronger couple.”

Serena looked up at her, her tears slowing. 

“It's going to be okay. Perhaps not today, or tomorrow, but it all starts with a step. You took a huge step in coming here and that was very brave. It is going to be okay.”

Serena felt her tears start again, for the first time in weeks she felt like she could breathe. She felt like it just might. 

\--

Serena threw her keys into the small bowl on the table by the drawer kicking her shoes off she hung up her coat. After her session she went for a long walk around Holby Rec, contemplating everything that way said. Sitting near the river on a bench she felt panic grip her, it had been a long time since she had an attack, she concentrated on her breath and the things around her and it eventually passed. When she opened her eyes she felt lighter, with a small smile on her face she walked back to her car.  
“I’m home!”

Bernie poked her head out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel “Hello you.”

“Hi,” She said shyly ducking her head, she knew her eyes were red rimmed. 

Bernie hesitated a second before opening up her arms. Serena gladly sank into them. “Okay?”

Serena felt her eyes prickle against Bernie’s shoulder and nodded, they would need to talk, “I will be.” She inhaled Bernie’s light perfume, the scent of her shampoo, the feel of her heart beating against her chest. “We will be.”


End file.
